Congrats to Barack Obama for his historic victory. It would have been historic either way it turned out on the Dems side, since Hillary was seeking to pave the way for women.
If you read the following it illustrates somewhat the feelings I have about the upcoming elections, which is as follows:
1) Even though Barack positions himself as the agent of "change" and McCain fancies himself the leader of "straight talk", I get the feeling that no matter who prevails we will get neither true change nor much in the way of straight talk.
2) Either way the wind blows, we are going to get some measure of change, Bush is not up for re-election and he can't pull a Putin and position himself as the puppeteer. We can at least thank God for that fact. The problem is that there is less turnover in our Senate and House of Representatives than in the Soviet Politburo. At least they no when to throw the bums out.
"The contrasts could not be more stark: an African-American Democrat versus a white Republican," reports The Christian Science Monitor. "The latter old enough to be the father of the former. One with no military experience, the other with a long Navy career punctuated by a harrowing period of captivity in a Hanoi prison camp. One with a soaring rhetorical style that can light up a sports arena, the other more comfortable in the back-and-forth banter of a town-hall meeting."
Both candidates have to get out and make political hay by creating a perceived crisis in the minds of the electorate. Once that is done they will make the argument that in fact, they are better equipped to solve than the other candidate. That's all. And it's amazing how much better things will get in the country once they are in office.
So my forecast is, five more months of cloudy skies, no sign of better weather on the political landscape until mid-November at the earliest.
In "Our Collectivist Candidates," David Boaz, Cato executive vice president and author of The Politics of Freedom, writes: "Barack Obama urged graduates of Connecticut's Wesleyan University to devote themselves to 'collective service.' This is not an unusual theme for a commencement address. But it was interesting how long he went on discussing various kinds of nonprofit activism without ever mentioning the virtues of commerce or of individual achievement. ... John McCain also denounces 'self-indulgence' and insists that Americans serve 'a national purpose that is greater than our individual interests.
"Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is 'self-indulgence,' that building a business is 'chasing after our money culture,' that working to provide a better life for our families is a 'narrow concern.' They're wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others."
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